• Video Games
•  > Specials
•  > Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie

King Kong boasts one of the longest game names and, thankfully, is similarly large on big screen thrills and adrenaline-pumping chills. The best movie tie-in yet...?

Platform:

Xbox 360

Release Date:

2 December 2005

Publisher:

Ubisoft

Genre:

Adventure

This is a game of uncomplicated and intense excitement. It doesn’t waste time with scene setting or background stories, but drops gamers right into the action on Skull Island where scriptwriter Jack Driscoll, actress Ann Darrow and last-chance filmmaker Carl Denham have landed in the hope of making a career-saving movie.

Events swiftly take a turn for the worst when Ann is kidnapped by the island natives and served up as a kong-sized snack. Thereafter players become Jack Driscoll who, in first-person perspective, sets off to rescue Ann. This is no easy task given the dense and forbidding jungle environments he must negotiate, but it’s made all the more complicated since the island is infested with hungry (and devious) prehistoric beasts, and worse still because Jack and co. came rather too lightly armed.

So the story unfolds – as much survival horror as first person shooter – with Jack and crew variously fending off, distracting and despatching an unrelenting Jurassic onslaught with whatever they can lay their hands on. Guns are in short supply and ammo is scarcer, so Jack often has to improvise using bones, spears and fire. There’s no on-screen ammo gauge either – Jack yells out when he’s running low. Similarly, the standard health bar has been jettisoned in favour of a Call Of Duty-styled system whereby the screen reddens and blurs each time Jack is hit. Thus there’s no visual clutter between you and the onscreen terror.

Later on players get to control Kong himself. Sadly these levels are short and account for about a quarter of the whole game, but they’re certainly the best fun while they last. Kong is easy to control, audaciously nimble and gratifyingly brutal too, as evinced by the wrestling-inspired backbreaker and jaw-snapping moves he uses to finish his many foes. They’re sickening moves, for sure, but once learned you’ll want to keep doing ‘em...

SCREENSHOTS

See All

REVIEWS

Kong 360 is a leap over its current-generation sibling. Backgrounds, effects, and, crucially, the characters are much deeper, crisper and better detailed, and little touches like how the screen shakes when Kong roars and the way Jack pants exhaustedly when under stress really ramp up the intensity. It’s not long though – keen gamers will play through in one 6-8 hour sitting. However it’s exciting and atmospheric throughout, and worth replaying just to show off what the 360 can do. If only all movie tie-ins were this good...